Qantas ‘pressures’ pilots to save on fuel
 

news.com.au


QANTAS pilots flying the flagship Airbus A380 super jumbos are being pressured to carry less fuel on long-haul flights in a cost-cutting measure to reduce the airline’s soaring fuel bills.

Company insiders have revealed a campaign - which includes charts ranking pilots based on fuel usage - that is increasing the risk of*flights being diverted because they could not safely reach their*destinations.

Two*flights were forced to divert with fuel issues in the past week. A Melbourne-bound A380 was redirected to Adelaide on Tuesday after crew discovered it had burnt through too much*fuel.

A*flight from London to Singapore was forced to land in Kuala Lumpur on Saturday because it had inadequate spare fuel to circle Singapore while a storm*cleared.

The*airline yesterday denied the diversions were solely the result of planes not carrying enough*fuel.

But documents obtained by The Daily Telegraph reveal that in the past two years the amount of “discretionary fuel” - carried on board*flights to deal with emergencies, unforeseen bad weather and airport delays - has been almost*halved.

The documents also show*flights landing at Singapore and Melbourne - the two destinations to suffer diversions this week - on average landed with the least amount of remaining fuel of any Qantas A380*flights.

A pilot said yesterday the document, which ranks pilots based on how much fuel they take on board, was putting “subtle pressure” on*crews.

“The*airline is trying to save money, knowing that a lot of our pilots will see it as a challenge and compete with each other,” he*said.

He said the reductions in discretionary fuel - which save the*airline about $3000 on each*flight - would lead to more delays due to weather or other unforeseen*problems.

Adjunct senior lecturer at the UNSW School of Aviation Peter Marosszeky, who has almost 50 years experience in the sector, said that while the fuel*policy had no impact on safety, it increased the chance of passengers being*inconvenienced.

A Qantas spokesman confirmed the company was looking at ways to reduce fuel costs but denied it had any impact on*services.

“It is entirely appropriate that, within our carefully managed*policies and procedures, pilots are encouraged to closely monitor discretionary fuel*uplift,” he*said.

Personally it wouldn't bother me if I was consistently the person at the bottom of the list.

Fuel required to be carried on board Is and will always be the decision of the Pilot in Command. My license - my decision!! It is not some management KPI!!

I am pretty sure CASA would agree!!

Disgraceful!!

More to follow

The Kelpie

Here's a thought...

See who can carry the most fuel, have a competetion amongst the ranks to see who can make to the top of the ladder. :D:D

I'll bet as soon as they see the chart rising it'll vanish quick smart!

more importantly, it'll really piss them off!

Qantas need to realise that they are not the only ones who can leak information which can easily be misinterpreted by the travelling public.

It is a different world to 89 in that regard.

Arr, yes, another blunt saying what's best.

Them's not AIR tanks, boy, them's FUEL tanks!

Diverting due fuel is not a safety issue. Not realising you have to is.

But at what cost? Does anyone here know the true cost of the diversions. Extra fuel overall used due to diverting, taking off again and more track miles to complete the journey?

Add to that the ground services at a port you are not served by an existing arrangement. Costs from ATC etc. Costs from crew schedule disruptions. Flow on effects to schedule from late aircraft.

Ohhhh hang on a minute, what about the passengers, who miss their connections, who hear the PA's, see the fuel truck and to the naive punter think they almost ran out crashed and burned as a result.

What is the public perception cost? They spend millions on advertising each year but can screw it all up in a matter of minutes.

Cost - Benefit analysis anyone?


PS Bloggsie :DAgain! :ok:

If this Qantas policy is true surely it is false economy. How much extra fuel was used as a result of the diversions?

I wonder if the media have seen a 'leaked' copy of that FSO threatening redundancies, unless we saved 8 million...you know, 8 of the 11 million that GD took as he walked out the door?

Whilst they can still say they havent made a pilot redundant, they sure have threatened to......

It's a weird thing, the fuel spec chart. Most guys I fly with treat it with contempt and carry what they think is appropriate.

However not all of them do that. Some are clearly quite influenced by being publicly compared to their peers and pressured in numerous ways to carry less fuel.

The interesting thing about this "leak" is that it's the cold hard truth, as opposed to what Qantas fed to the media about the staff travel claim which was flagrantly misleading.

Lol. When I first saw my chart it put me at 34%. IE I carried less fuel than average. I immediately upped my fuel orders as I obviously wasn't carrying as much fuel as the other blokes. :ok: :}

I must say that I've got no gripes with QF providing me with figures about how much additional fuel I'm putting on but the sheet they provide is completely devoid of context regarding which sectors they've analysed, etc. Without that context you know nothing. It also doesn't count on the fact that I may have loaded on additional fuel and arrived with (say) 7 plus ton but that I saved the diversion when the TEMPO requirement slid into my arrival time. It just shows that I arrived with 7 ton of fuel. In essence, it's a useless tool and not worth their time doing it.

Further, having seen the sheet it doesn't change anything for me. I never put on discretionary fuel I didn't think I needed prior to getting the sheet and nothing has changed since that time (not with standing my smart alec comments earlier). I still load discretionary fuel as needed. Do I feel pressured? No. Could some guys and gals feel pressured? Probably.

If you want a real giggle though- although it may cause you to cry at the banality of it all- then go to the original article and check out some of the comments. Fran of Sydney is a good one. Apparently we don't order the fuel and the article must be wrong because we just see what fuel is loaded on the loadsheet.

In my jallopy it costs 3% per hour to carry "extra" fuel.

As is usual in these types of matters, the beancounters will probably win, based purely on cost. Cheaper to run around with less fuel and cop the occasional diversion. The damage to the brand however is not measurable and so is swept under the carpet.

Ansett introduced these fuel use/uplift charts that compared actual with flight plan and then the individual with the rest of the fleet.

At best it can be described as a revolting document. Fortunately, on the day the charts came out, monthly, the bin near the mail box was full to over flowing.

There is only one real reason for this behavior and that is intimidation.

My bolding.

Companies that do this historically end up having a serious mishap at some stage. This is a very dangerous practice. Can anyone confirm that the Qf safety department has been closed or renamed "Cost Cutting". 500 million must have been a disappointment.

CASA are you there? Youhoo!!!

There comes a point where cost cutting starts to increase the likelihood of an accident. How far will it go?

Skippers Braz, Whyalla Chieftain anybody?

The fuel graph existed in an earlier form and disappeared from view around 2000. I wondered then if the disappearance was because it had had the opposite effect to what was intended. I know that on the couple I received, my fuel order had gone up on the second one, but I'd moved down in the rankings. Thus far the same thing has happened with this new variant.

It was also easy to manipulate, if that took your fancy. Ofload enough tankered fuel, and you could have a negative rating......

Or stay low and go hard and your 'over burn' increased and you landed with less fuel thus making you look very good. :E

Then they'll get you on the high burn rate, Keg. := :E

Pardon my ignorance, but if I may ask a question for the jet pilots,

Do you fly on a company mandated speed for the type of aircraft flown, or do you let the FMC fly it economically or do you set your mach speed in the FMC as you desire to stay on schedule? Or is it a mix of all three?

Jets fly to a Cost Index (a speed setting in the FMS). The Cost Index is a number (normally 0 to 100, sometimes 999 :}) that compromises between speed (eg saving maintenance costs, crew costs if paid by the hour) and fuel burn (the slower, the better fuel burn).

A company may publish a specific Cost Index for a sector or may just have a generic "one size fits all" Cost Index.

The crew then inserts the planned CI into the FMS and lets the FMS work out what actual speed to fly. The FMS will then fly the aircraft at that speed.

The planned speed can be overidden by the crew to make up time or to lose time.

Sierra I was thinking the same same thing with regards to cost index or LRC. Alternatively, if hypothetically I was PIC not even upper management would influence my decision to take on extra fuel. It sounds like these decisions come from beancounters that have never been near an aircraft in thier life.
If extra fuel is taken but not burnt, who the he'll cares. The remaining fuel would mean the next fuel load to be added will be less, thus not "costing" more money.

It ain't rocket science!!

Rocket

Sierra5913, normal Qantas policy is econ speed at a given (fixed) FMC cost index which varies with aircraft type, but there are caveats which involve staying close to schedule too. So the answer is "it depends".

Also, Qantas has become so dysfunctional in the Dixon/Joyce era that the left hand doesn't even know the right hand exists. No one department cares what any course of action they take is going to cost any other department. They only care what the cost is to their department directly. If one business segment implements a policy which saves them a million dollars on paper, but costs another business segment two million dollars in flow-on effects in the real world, that's fine.

So the pilots do make decisions to vary the speed based on many factors, like "is a late arrival going to cause major disruption to the next crew/aircraft schedule" and so on. If we didn't take these factors into account and just let Qantas run itself, the wheels would fall off rapidly.

It is burnt. Read my post above. You may think it's not Rocket Science, but flying around with full tanks isn't very smart for the business. The commonsense medium is the issue.

Where I am the C.I is entered, (company derived), and then normally flown in Econ. Adjustments made to use fixed Mach or LRC sometimes made depending on what you need to achieve. Majority is ci and Econ. (fmc).

In theory, if only minimum operational fuel was taken on every flight (i.e. no discretionary), even with 2 diversions a week, the savings would be 8 figures a year. However, the costs are based on quantifiable factors, which do not include loss of business due inconvenience and the negative media impact.

Sorry mate, but you're wrong.

When we are talking tonnes of fuel, it burns fuel to tanker fuel.

Think if you carry 7 tones extra, that could translate into the equivalent weight of roughly 70 pax.

Obviously the more fuel you carry, the more fuel you burn carrying it!

I always like to have a minimum of half an hour of fuel in the tanks excluding reserves regardless when I arrive. There is nothing worse than watching the fuel gauge and recalculating your fuel constantly second guessing yourself. As Murphy usually has it, the day you go minimum fuel is the day you're held, or given huge track miles, or slowed down to a crawl at a low level.

I like to have a bit of fat for my own sanity!

As a rule of thumb yes......but remember, only a small percentage of that extra tonne will be burnt... eg, on a SYD - MEL sector the extra burn is negligible - therefore most of the fuel remains for the next sector, on something longer then yes you might start burning into it a bit more..

However if you fly a little smarter the extra burn can be offset.

For example SYD-PER.... sometimes if you drop several thousand feet below the 100+ headwind, you can save time and make gas. Even though its well below optimum. Many longhaulers are so used to climbing for long range efficiency they refuse to consider the option of dropping so far below optimum. (Unless its for ride)

I recall those fuel graphs at Ansett – and the interesting follow-up notice to pilots. Management were aware that some Captains were carrying LESS than the flight-plan fuel to improve their ranking on the list.

Whether or not these charts constitute intimidation depends on the response of the recipient. As you see; attitudes can vary quite a bit.

This is a few months old from my info. I think the race started some time ago!

Somebody may not meet their KPI perhaps?:{

Yes, you have a point, however if you were not tankering fuel on the longer sectors with the technique above, you could save even more gas.

It's akin to what came first, the chicken or the egg.

My feeling is you're the Pilot in command and you determine the extra safety measures you deem necessary.

I can honestly say I have never been hassled by the company I operate for in regards to my fuel uploads. As long as I am not offloading revenue payload to carry fuel that isn't required, I'm left to my own devices.

Thanks for the replies.

I once had a look at the crz page on a 738 FMC and noticed there were a few speed options. I didn't know whether there was a management requirement to use a certain one. As we know, beancounters love consistency in their spreadsheets.

I remember a year or so ago I was given 2 flight plans for the one sector, one at FL380 and the other I think was at FL280. At FL380 the headwinds were over 150kts, and the flight time was about 6 hours, obviously at FL280 the headwind was a lot less and the flight time a lot less too, possibly up to an hour less, but the fuel burn was about 2 tonnes higher at the lower level even with the shorter flight time.

These are not exact figures but I just remember thinking at the time that if the company wanted the plane to arrive earlier it was going to cost them 2 tonnes of fuel to do it.

I wonder if QF management are pressuring pilots to take 747-400s with dodgy outsourced Rolls Royce engines?

Wouldn't it smarter if Qantas pilots only fuelled up on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday when fuel is a bit cheaper?

I heard that a well run airline in India manages the fuel issue very well. They've used historical data to calculate average vector/hold times at all their destinations and included the extra fuel in the flight plan. If pilots carry extra fuel they have to put down a reason. The company doesn't argue that the pilot-in-command has the right to put on additional fuel, but the company has the right to ask the captain to justify the uplift. Extra fuel is rarely taken. There aren't many diversions due to the accuracy of the flight plans.

Comfort fuel is a state of mind in my opinion, especially in other parts of the world were an alternate is always required. I know that I carry too much fuel, but I'm selfish. I don't think it helps the company in the long run.

Sue ridgepipe- it might have cost an extra 2 tonne of fuel, but how much would have been saved by running the thing for an extra hour? Not having a go, just curious as to what the operating costs would be for 1 hour, whether that would outweigh 2 tonne of juice.

they are being directed to do all this.
 

All I can add to this issue is that Qantas is following tactics being layed out for them by Boston Consulting Group (BCG). BCG made all the arrangements to get Jetstar up and running and they are very good at restructuring and lowering T&C's.

So beware those involved that this just may be a tactic to push people over the edge and trigger reactions.
If PIA is done in regards to crew etc I have it on good authority that Qantas will not give in on this 'strike' of sorts. So I can only assume that they have tricks up their sleeves (contracted pilots from o/s??).

Your only bet is to have massive support on whatever action you take.

good luck.

Green goblin, I thought of the fact that tankering fuel would result in increased fuel burn overall, but really are we penny pinching here? Surely it's better to have too much fuel than not enough. The people that create the comapny fuel policy should have taken this into account while working closely with the people that define ticket prices.

As other ppruners have mentioned, a fuel related incident really is the last thing the rat needs at the moment. If a hull loss were to be the result of A fuel exhaustion incident there would be no airline left to speak of.

The A team would have already worked out the statistical probability of a hull loss from lower fuel loads prior to the directive.

I wonder if all their stats take into account the other areas they are also running stats on.

There must be a compound factor?

Low fuel, outsourced maintenance, Lower experience, less training, crew fatigue, minimum cabin crew.

Holes in the cheese anyone?

Rocket the extra fuel costs mojney even if you don't use it becuase it increases the weight of the aircraft, thus burning more fuel overall.

So...it is rocket science....;)

Wel I am old school Skippers call at all times . No debate entered inti

Hull loss due to insufficient fuel? I can think of a number of things that could possibly lead to a hull loss in airlines generally and QF specifically. Running the tanks dry and the aircraft subsequently augering in is a very, very, long way down that list! :rolleyes:

Carry a ton of fuel between Sydney and Perth on a 767 and you'll burn 250kgs. Carry 4 ton and you'll burn 1 of it meaning you'll only have an additional 3 ton over the top of Perth. THAT is a significant amount of money. If you do that across all the services that QF (and Virgin and J*) fly daily in Australia and you're talking about millions of dollars a week. It's not just as simple as carrying the extra fuel all the time.